


Gray

by Motchi



Series: Shades of Gray [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Crack Pairing, Crack Treated Seriously, Drama, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 11:33:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20705303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Motchi/pseuds/Motchi
Summary: An "almost dark" fairy tale, a "not-quite" love story. Tifa-centric multichap, Sephiroth/Tifa, Post-KH2.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This came about because a friend wanted to see what Sephiroth looked like if he fell in love and wasn’t written as a “wailing!vagina.” 
> 
> For Joanie.

### Prologue

It took her a year to learn she was invisible.

Well, perhaps not quite a year, but eleven months and twenty-one days came awfully close.

In hindsight, it probably shouldn't have taken her that long. There had been clues, after all. Every town, village and city she had traveled to she had asked the same questions: "Have you seen a man? He's this tall, but his hair's this tall. His eyes are blue. He has hair the color of lemons, the sun, that sign over there. He doesn't talk much, and he carries a sword nearly as big as himself. Have you seen him?"

And every town, village and city had given her the same answer: indifferent silence looking anywhere but at her.

Finally, a small, brown, chittering animal with a curly tail and a tiny, red, overturned bucket on its head told her A Big Secret. It wasn't her accent, it wasn't the arrangement of her freckles, it wasn't her choice of clothes, her penchant for black or any other avenues of blame. The reason why no one had seen him yet was because no one had seen _her_.

A blazing sunset was not on hand to illuminate this important revelation. A wandering breeze did not idle by to stir the hair at her temples into a picture-perfect moment. Time did not slow itself to make the act of blinking seem wondrous and ethereal. Sweat ran down her temples, courtesy of a too-bright sun. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck. Her backside was numb from thinking too long on the rooftop of a noisy, bustling, desert-colored city. She was unglorious and unprepared to deal with the sinking reality that she was not who she used to be.

She had been black hair and brown eyes once. She had been two inches shorter than the top of his head, but six inches shorter than the top of his hair. She had been a scar at her hairline. She had been skin that rarely sunburned. She had been a chipped bicuspid. She had been two arms, two legs, and a heart that still dreamed of waking up to a sunrise that didn't hurt.

_But that was before_, she thought. _Now, I am invisible...and something else_.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author replies to comments.


	2. Chapter One

### Chapter One

_He was the faintest of touches against a bare knee the day she decided to stop resisting him._

_"There you are," he said, smiling. "Put that down and pay attention to me." He snatched the book from her hand and closed it with thud._

_"Cloud! I was reading that," she protested._

_"Page three hundred and twelve, Tifa—you can go back to it later." He jumped up and pulled her to her feet. "Now, come on. Let's go find some happiness under a tree somewhere."_

_"Yeah, happiness." Like the kind she found in his blue eyes. "There's not enough of that anymore," she said, and stole away with him to find some. _

* * *

The flighty, giggling butterfly had been no help, nor the snake who had wound its way down a slick branch for a closer look at her. _He_ was not there, never had been, and now she was hopelessly lost in a forest that smelled of ripe earth and future rain, trying to coax answers from a pretty purple plant.

_Have you seen a man? He's this tall, but his hair's this tall. His eyes are blue. He has hair the color of your leaves. He doesn't talk much, and he carries a sword nearly as big as himself. Have you seen him?_

"You won't find him in there, you realize."

The voice came swooping in unexpectedly, like a bat at midday. A rich baritone, full of dark and dangerous things. Tifa sprang to her feet and confronted the speaker with raised fists.

"Is this how you greet old friends, Tifa?" Sephiroth asked.

In his long, heavy attire, he looked just as lost as she, as if he had made a wrong turn in some shadowy lair and stepped into this humid wilderness on accident. He was a stark absence of green, an ominous shadow amid the vibrancy that flowed around them. His lone black shoulder wing beat a lazy current into the air as he leaned against a fallen tree, and Tifa was ashamed at how much emotion was unburied by hearing her name, by finally being _seen_. She had to angrily remind herself that the last time she had seen this man was the last time she had seen Cloud.

"Where is he?" Tifa demanded. Her knuckles cracked. She dug her toes further into the dirt, readying herself to launch, swing, punch the answer out of him. "And we were never friends, Sephiroth."

"True," Sephiroth agreed. "But perhaps this cold shoulder of yours is why you've been unable to find him. I don't need to tell you how unbecoming it is."

It was a backhand to the face, delivered from twelve feet away. And to further the insult, her eyes began to sting. "What have you done with him?"

One of Sephiroth's eyebrows curved upward in surprise. "I've done nothing with him," he insisted.

"You've seen him, though, haven't you?" Tifa pressed. Her voice sounded all wrong to her, all wobbly and strained and pleading, yet she couldn't help it. "I know you have and I know you know where he is."

Sephiroth plucked a large red beetle from his shoulder in disdain and flicked it into the trees. "Possibly. Or possibly not. Take your pick."

It was hopeless. Tifa wished he'd never appeared. She wished he'd go back to wherever it was he took a wrong turn from. She wished she could run away without fearing an impossibly long sword in the back.

"Nothing to say, darling girl?" There was a spark of amusement in his eyes.

"No," Tifa answered, and looked away. "I have nothing to say."

Sephiroth scoffed. "You should know better than to lie to me. Aren't you dying to ask me what he said when I saw him three days ago?"

The words burst out before she could stop them. "Yes! Tell me!"

His tsking sound reminded Tifa of a buzzing mosquito. She wanted to snatch it from the air and crush it. "'I told you not to lie to me," Sephiroth said. "Now if only you treated yourself with the same care."

He pushed off from the trunk and started slow, deliberate steps toward her. She watched his effortless grace with an appalled fascination, observing the way his hair swayed around a forehead unblemished by a trivial thing like sweat, the way the two wings at his side kept their pinions clear of dirty roots and weeds. When he was near enough to make her nerves crackle and hiss, he asked in a sweetly moonless voice, "Does the darkness bother you, Tifa?"

"Go to hell, Sephiroth," she said, voice steady for once.

"What a coincidence." He was a slow, syrupy trickle from her ears to her spine. "Those were his words, too. Only," he paused for dramatic effect, "unlike you, he wasn't alone."

The tip of a leather glove trailed down her cheek, mapping out the path a tear might take if she allowed it. It might have been a caress, Tifa noted, but his eyes were the wrong kind of blue. "Perhaps," Sephiroth said softly, "the reason you can't find him is because he doesn't need you any more."

Never mind running away; his words were just as treacherous, a blade slipping through hope instead of muscle. Old fears sprang from their hiding places and rushed to fill the wound. She wanted to howl and shriek and double over at the poison he'd purposely left festering within her.

"You're lying," she said, knocking his hand away and raising her fists again. "You're just trying to get to me_._"

Sephiroth smiled. "Am I?"

But before she could answer, there was a sudden flurry of black wings, and in the place where he had been standing the jungle was green again.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author replies to comments.


	3. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The octopus fairy tale is my creation, even if it sounds Disney-ish.

### Chapter Two

_She slid into the small lake with a nervous giggle. If her father ever found out about what she did after he went to bed..._

_"I've got you, Tifa." Steady hands caught her. His voice was accompanied by the sounds of swirling water as he took them further out, until they were submerged in stars. _

_"Will you ever not have me, Cloud?" she teased, slinking her arms around his neck._

_"Not if I have anything to do with it," he answered._

* * *

She was engulfed in a sea of tears, according to the eight-armed creature who introduced himself as Blue-Ringed Octopus. Long ago, he told her, a princess of his kind had fallen so in love with the sun that each night was like a small death to her. It took nine years for all three of her hearts to break, and in that time, the princess had cried enough to change the taste of the ocean.

It was a sad and bittersweet tale, a lump in Tifa's throat as she floated away. Was there such a thing as empathy through osmosis? Though she had only two arms and one heart, she understood an ocean's worth of grief. She wished she could barter away her lungs to be a dappled, underwater blue-green, to remain under the sea and be forever surrounded by leagues of someone else's terrible yearning.

Surfacing was like a punishment. Her breathing sounded too alive to her ears; her limbs, which had never failed her before, felt too heavy. The sunset was too bright, too red, too indifferent. As she blinked the salt from her eyes and struck out for shore, she wondered when reality had become so unsympathetic and ugly.

The cove she was paddling toward might've been an exception to that. Its inlet arms beckoned to her as if inviting her in for an embrace. Its white sand and tall, swaying trees offered their apologies for being made of rock, leaves and bark instead of salt and tears. It was picturesque and beautiful, and a "wish-you-were-here-Cloud" kind of thought added just enough melancholy for her to forgive its perfections.

_I do wish you were here_, she thought, as she trudged her way to the beach. He would've liked the way the water was clear enough to see the colorful little shells and pebbles at the bottom. He would've splashed her, and she would've chased him, and he would've laughed at her, and she would've kissed him, and afterward they would've lain on the beach together, counting the stars until her hair dried.

She felt the first slip of tears just as she became aware that she wasn't alone. Sephiroth was sitting next to her pile of discarded clothes, forearms resting on knees, watching her heart break as she came up from the waves.

"He wasn't down there, was he?" he said. It was more of a statement than a question. "He doesn't strike me as a fins and flippers type."

"Then why did you ask?" she retorted, sniffing and wishing she had set out in more than just her underwear. She wasn't exactly naked, but she noticed the way his eyes refused to stay in one spot. The ocean. Her legs. The shell next to his boot. Her wet, probably see-through bra. The ocean, again. Finally, her eyes.

"It was a rhetorical question," he answered.

Her blush irritated her. "Why are you here?" Tifa asked, snatching up her clothes from the sand and retreating to a spot behind him.

"I'm paying you a visit, of course." His lone shoulder wing snapped open and inserted itself between them like a screen. "I assumed this would be an obvious answer," he said, the dryness in his voice slightly muffled by feathers.

His consideration, as unexpected as a worm in an apple, made her pause. She locked herself in ten seconds of debate before deciding to take advantage of it. She quickly stripped from her wet underwear and hopped one-footed into her shorts. "Yes, but why are you paying me a visit?" she said to his back. "Last I knew we were enemies. You're trying to get to me, remember?"

"Am I?" Sephiroth said. A sea bird landed near the shore; his hair stirred below his wing as he turned his head to look. "I've never hated you, Tifa."

Tifa caught a glimpse of his profile, stern and arrogant as ever. "You've never liked me, either," she pointed out, pulling her undershirt over her head.

"True, but my dislike is indiscriminate. It was never anything personal."

Mulling that over, Tifa threaded her arms into her vest and zipped it up. She wondered, again, what purpose—if any—was behind this visit. His overtures bordered on friendly today, and it was almost uncomfortable to hear and see him without his usual mocking tone or customary sneer. She stood there with her wet things in her hand and an uneasy, squirmy feeling in her gut, as if this change in Sephiroth meant she had always been wrong about him.

"I'm judging from your silence that you'd rather we talk of something else. Something less...personal?"

Tifa came out of her musings to find him looking over his shoulder at her with a neutral but expectant expression. She made a show of moving her shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. It wasn't like she had anything else to do—or anyone else to talk to, for that matter—but Tifa didn't want him thinking she enjoyed his company and that it was acceptable for him to make a habit of dropping in on her while she was less than decent.

His eyebrow arched, at either her answer or lack of one. "All right. How was the water today? Warm? Blue? Salty?"

Tifa frowned, remembering three hearts and nine years. "Why?"

He twisted around fully and settled a hand on the ground. "You wanted to talk about something bland and impersonal," he said, looking at her. "I'm indulging you. Now it's your turn to indulge me. Answer."

"Fine," Tifa said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "It was all of them, I guess."

He nodded at her answer, as if he was pleased to find the ocean exactly how it should be. "And do you like this place?"

"I suppose I do. It's warm. It's got trees. The view's nice." She thought of Cloud again, and it made her angry. It should've been him she was having this conversation with, not his bastard shadow. "Look, what do you want? Why the sudden interest in my welfare, or is this just more of you trying to get to me? I mean, I find it hard to believe this is a casual visit. Why isn't your sword swinging at me yet?"

The idea amused him enough to warrant a brief smile. "And what purpose would that serve?"

"I have no idea," Tifa said. "I thought your dislike was indiscriminate."

"Then by all means," Sephiroth said, sweeping a hand in invitation, "feel free to list the people my dislike has indiscriminately killed."

Tifa dug through her memory banks trying to disinter some corpse he was responsible for. Admittedly, she was coming up empty-handed, but that didn't mean he was innocent. He looked, sounded and acted too much the part to not be evil in some way.

"I'm waiting, Tifa." He gave her a penetrating stare which she tried not to squirm under. "I imagine since this list is very long there must be some name you can dredge up."

She couldn't, but he didn't need to know that. "Let's talk about why you're here instead."

"You couldn't think of anyone, could you?" Sephiroth said knowingly. "You shouldn't assume things about me. It makes you look very foolish."

"We were talking about why _you're_ here," Tifa reminded him, red-faced.

Sephiroth stood up and brushed the sand from his clothing. He gave her another long stare before turning away to look up at the sky, at the ocean, at the shore. "Tell me," he said, as a small, coral-colored crab scuttled across the sand. "Where would you go, what would you do when your life's meaning has no use for you any more?"

So the civilities were over. She should've known it wouldn't last the duration of his visit—the man never could pass up a chance to taunt. "I could ask you the same thing," Tifa replied testily.

He blinked. "You have no idea," he said, almost pityingly. His eyes met hers again. "He'll always have a need for the darkness—remember, he found me, not the other way around. Ask yourself why he never searches for you."

Tifa lifted her chin. "He doesn't have to search. He knows—"

"That you'll be searching for him instead? That no matter how desperate you become, no matter how pathetic you grow, you'll continue to search until you find him. Is this what he knows?"

He was getting good at those verbal backhands, Tifa thought. She even flinched this time. "Go to hell, Sephiroth."

His lips curved. "As you wish," Sephiroth said, opening his wings.

Then he was gone, leaving Tifa standing there, alone and dripping, wondering what _she_ knew.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author replies to comments.


	4. Chapter Three

###  **Chapter Three**

_Her head turned to where he lay next to her on the blanket. "Would you still love me if a tree fell on me?"_

_"I would still love you if a tree fell on you," his profile answered with a smile._

_She grinned back at him. "Would you still love me if lightning hit me and set me on fire?" _

_"Tifa..." Cloud rolled his head toward hers. "You'd probably be dead."_

_"So? You would still love me if I were dead, wouldn't you?"_

_He sighed, but she knew it was for her benefit, not his. "Yes, I would still love you."_

_She beamed smugly at him and squinted up at the woolly clouds grazing in the pasture of the sky. "Would you love me if a herd of...of..." She frowned. "...Of..."_

_"Of?" he prodded._

_"Oh, I don't know!" she huffed. "Use your imagination, but think of something large and...herdish. Would you still love me if—?"_

_"Tifa," he said solemnly. "I'll always love you."_

* * *

She had known she wouldn't find him here, not with its flat, expressionless plains and—

_Baobabs, _a bird with a gaudy beak told her. The odd trees with roots for branches and hollow-swollen trunks were _baobabs_.

_Then I am a baobab now,_ Tifa thought. _I am roots where I shouldn't be and empty when I should be full. I have become something that exists only to break up the dry terrain. _

She would also call herself a shadow of who she used to be, but she couldn't remember who that was any more. The Tifa who had read novels, swum in dark ponds and lain carefree under the sky was gone, lost during the last year like a shirt button. The woman she had been was missing and in her stead was an empty place.

A storm cloud of dust, low on the horizon, caught Tifa's eye. Through the haze, she could make out a hundred racing bodies, covered in black and white lines that streaked downward like lightning. Thunder from a thousand hooves throbbed up from the ground to her ankles and knees. She hadn't known this empty green- and straw-colored grassland had a heartbeat, and yet here it was, a wild tempest headed for her, straining for some point beyond her, destined for something greater than landscape.

Could she somehow be a part of it? She had been chasing forever, could she not also flee forever? Her two legs could do everything four legs could. She, too, could raise the earth to dust. She, too, could run so free and fast she blurred to gray. The incessant tremor in the ground reverberated in her legs, in her nerves, in all the secret parts of her, and whispered to her how much better life was as something more than a tree. _Be one of us_, it hummed. _Be one of us_.

Tifa tried to shake the sight, sound and idea from her head. No, she couldn't be one of them. She was three broken hearts and an ocean of tears. She was a funny tree with a funny name. She was static and firmly rooted into dry, cracked truths, waiting for the smell of rain to remind her that happiness came from clouds. She was not one of _them_. _I am a baobab, _she said. _I am a tree_. _I am a tree_.

But she was a woman when the gray storm overtook her. A rush of noise filled up and deafened her ears. Dust from a thousand resolved hooves rose up and choked up her nose and throat. A terrible, tremulous fear began to take hold of her as black and white bodies crowded, jostled and threatened to carry her away—or worse, shatter her into a million splinters.

_One of us, _whispered a voice above the sound and chaos._ You can. You can. You can._

_I can't!_ Tifa thought in despair. All around her, majestic black and white heads were bending in pity. She wiped her tears with the back of a wrist and told herself not to be afraid, then Tifa raised her chin to the tide, defiant. She closed her eyes and imagined she was a rock parting a swift-moving river. Imagined she was long-legged and striking ground. Imagined she was running, fluid and fleet, across the packed earth, across salted oceans, across yards of memories. Imagined she was anything but invisible. Imagined she was happy and whole, once again.

"Well, this is unexpected."

She nearly fell, so sudden and obtrusive was the voice. Her eyes jolted open. The river was gone; the last _thud-thud_ of hooves grew faint beneath her feet, like a paling, dying pulse, leaving him—a different black and white, yet one just as precarious—in its wake. Tifa was surprised yet not surprised to see Sephiroth standing before her; she was a tree again, not a rock. He always seemed to catch her at her weakest.

His eyes brought the first entrance of winter into this summer country. "What were you hoping to accomplish?" he said, and as he spoke, he circled her, wrapping his words around her left shoulder, dribbling them down her spine, and skimming them along the hairs of her right arm."Did you expect your recklessness to bring him here? Did you expect him to come running to save you?"

His boots had mapped a fence around hers in the hoof-pocked earth. She could feel him studying the top of her head, her branches, likely looking for something to wound her with. "Why are you here in this"—he looked around in disdain—"place?"

_One of us. One of us, _came the whisper. It was a seductive enough to leave her with an ache, but it wasn't enough to shake the dead from her leaves, the woodenness from her answer. "Because I want to be," Tifa murmured.

Sephiroth's teeth flashed. Tifa waited for the accompanying thunder, but he only said, "I see. And what else do you want?"

Tifa said nothing._ I am a tree, _she thought_._ Trees looked to the sky for salvation, did they not? She lifted her eyes to it, hoping an answer could be found in it, but it, too, was cloudless.

"Shall I ask you a different question, then?" he said. "Which does that heart of yours yearn for more—him," there was a snort in the syllable, "or to be free of him?"

He folded his arms, and for the first time she noticed an absence of gloves. Encased in flesh instead of impersonal black, his hand gave him back a sort of humanity. Her eyes snagged on the two fingers he steadily tapped at his elbow—_t__hud-thud, _like a heartbeat_._ Did that mean he was alive and she wasn't?

"I'm waiting, Tifa," he said._ Thud-thud._

She continued to stare at his fingers. The nails were neatly clipped until there was only a thin thread of white showing. Her own nails were thick straps of black. "I don't know."

"Do you still dream of him at night?" he asked. When she shook her head, Sephiroth leaned in and sniffed delicately at the rounded corner of her jaw. His nose brushed against a cheekbone; his breath moved the strands of hairs that lingered at her ear. "Then what do you dream of, Tifa?" he whispered.

_Tifa, I'll always love you. _

She felt her roots yearning, stretching toward the border at her feet. She blinked.

"Nothing," Tifa answered. "I dream of nothing."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author replies to comments.


	5. Chapter Four

###  **Chapter Four**

_"Where have you been all my life?" he said. _

_She'd heard the line before, in more charming circumstances and from handsomer men, but she particularly liked the static in his voice and the way his blue eyes stayed above her neck._

* * *

The wind was a love song. It called her from the pink smell of blossoming trees into the white, empty mountains with promises of love. It pushed the hair back from her face, cupped her cheeks with its biting, terrible hands, and told her it loved the way she used to smile.

Tifa followed it through quiet villages, across half-drowned fields of coned hats, up neglected paths until the song became a high, thin howl. The ground beneath her had been bled of the color pink, the color green, the color yellow and its friend, purple—of every color in the wheel—until there was only empty white.

_Love, lovely, loved_, the wind said. _I love you_.

It was a love song, and yet it was cold like silence or a shoulder was cold. Tifa rubbed her bare arms, wishing the falling flurries were petals, or dandelion seeds, or something that might make the wind less of a liar. _No, you don't_, she answered. _Though I will scale this mountain for you, you won't_.

_I love you_, the wind said again. _I have always_.

_No! I don't believe you_, Tifa said. _Words. They don't warm anything inside any more_.

_There's nothing inside to warm_, it retorted. _Knock, knock. You're all hollow. Like an uprooted tree. Dead_. _A herd of something large could trample you into dust._

_You're wrong, _Tifa said. She sank to her knees, tired, and let the snow burn her ankles and shins. _You're wrong!_

_Then prove it_.

She burrowed down through her strata, down through muscle and bone, down, down to the heart of her, to see if anything remained of the girl who chased the sun. She found a yearning, hot and bright as a flickering match, for something more. _See? __There's plenty, _she cried_. You're not looking hard enough!_

But the wind only gusted in a spiral around her legs. It pinched the ends of her hair and turned them, stinging, against her reddened skin. _You're lying to yourself, _the wind continued, relentless. _D__eep down inside you're trying to make up for a broken promise_.

She clapped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. _I'm not! You lie! I'm not! I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm—_

"Foolish." Strong hands clamped over her arms and hauled her upright. "Your stupidity runs as deep as your naiveté."

The ground crunched and the wind howled as she was pulled along like a naughty child. A wall of rock appeared beneath the tips of her wet hair just before she was dumped into someone's lap. Black feathers snapped up around them as a crude sort of shelter which the wind beat against like an uninvited guest.

"Foolish," Sephiroth repeated. Strands of his hair caught and dragged on the rock edges behind him as he shifted her into a better position. "I would ask you what you were thinking, but I already know you weren't. Were you aware that there are dragons living up here?"

She wasn't.

"Have you ever seen one before?" Sephiroth asked.

She hadn't.

His breath was a chilly cloud of ash in the dimness. "You wouldn't like them," Sephiroth told her. "They would have smelled you and taken you to exist someplace in the dark. Whether you lived or died would've depended on how shiny your hair was, or how high you could jump, or which direction the trees bent, or some other nonsense. Is that what you want? Do you want your life hanging on something as trivial as a dragon's whims?"

She shook her head.

"I don't believe you, Tifa. You're courting either death or dragons—or worse—with your arms and legs and whatever else you haven't got the sense to cover up. I have long suspected I gave you more credit than you deserved, but this continued recklessness of yours is a revelation."

His heartbeat and his voice were tremors through his chest, great thunderclaps trapped beneath leather and lungs and ribs—if she tore him open would it rain? She drew her legs up into the shelter of his body and pressed herself closer to better hear them. _Thud-thud_. The sound was too hot against her ear. She lifted her head to distract herself with his wrongly colored eyes.

"Could it be?" He stopped and was silent for a moment, studying her. Then he wondered, breath hot against her ear, "Do you want to live in the dark, Tifa?"

A gloved hand crept up a calf and along the outside of a knee before stopping at her thigh. The nerves above her shoulder blades shivered. She should stop him. She should push his hand away, break through this strange cocoon of wings and man, and let the wind convince her she was broken and invisible. But she particularly liked the way his blue eyes stayed above her neck.

_I'm not dead_, she gloated. _I'm not_.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author replies to comments.


	6. Chapter Five

###  **Chapter Five**

_"I should fight you, you know," he said._

_"But you won't," she said in a knowing tone. "You love me too much."_

_He sighed. "You're right. But kiss me, at least. After all, I'm doing this for you."_

_She rolled her eyes. "Oh, Cloud," she said. "It's just a birthday party. It won't kill you." But she gave him what he wanted anyway._

* * *

He wasn't here, but there was evidence of a recent battle. Several deep gouges had been hewn into the stone steps flanking the arena. A column was broken and lying on its side in three pieces. Discarded potion bottles lay like corpses in sand pocked by footfalls and too numerous to count.

She walked through the empty area in wonder. Though the arena had once been alive with sound and fury, it was now silent and still. The night air was cold and indifferent, the sky punctured with stars that kept to themselves. Under her bare feet, the shifting ground whispered words she couldn't understand, and, for the first time, despite a year of being alone, Tifa felt lonely.

She rubbed her arms, as if suddenly chilled, and sank down on the lowest ledge of steps. She'd been here before; Cloud had been with her then. The air hadn't been still, it had been vibrant. Above them, the sky had been bright with the sun. She stared at the shadows in the sand, willing them to move, to attach themselves to living memories. She remembered _e__lectricity tripping through the hairs on her arms. Nerves alight with adrenaline_. She remembered her body moving, twisting, punching, swinging and _oh gods, oh planet, oh stars above! _Alive! She had been alive!

A loud wail escaped her as she slid from the hard ledge. She had been alive once, but what was she now? Hard grits of sand dug into her knees and forearms as she sank down, doubled over, and tried to turn herself inside out to find the answer. Grief, then pride, then pity, then everything else that was left over came spilling out until all that remained was an ache, a tumor, an ugly lump of doubt in the shape of her heart. Yes, her heart was the culprit. It was pumping her veins with bitterness and choking her arteries with grudge. Sobbing, she clawed at her chest, trying to free herself of it.

"You!" Tifa cried. She coughed as dust and shame tightened her throat. Angry at herself, at her body for failing her, she pounded a fist into the sand then rolled onto her back and jammed the heels of her palms to her wet eyes. "I was doing this for you!" she shouted as loud as she could. _"For you!"_

_For you! __For you! _the walls shouted back._ For you! __For you! _Tifa listened to it echo all around the hollow arena until it was a rally cry. _For you! For you! For you! _

But_ For whom? _was the question she was left with after the stones swallowed the noise and left her in silence. For a long while Tifa lay in the sand, breathing in the hush surrounding her, asking herself a multitude of things she had no answers for. With a resigned, shaky inhale she tentatively slid her hands from her eyes and blinked up at the glittery, endless ocean above. It had become fuller somehow, less indifferent, more inviting. She felt less like an intruder and more like _one of us_.

She put a hand on her chest, over her heart, and felt a pulsing beat underneath. _Thud-thud. __Yes_, Tifa thought. "I'm not dead."

A dark shape leaned over her, blotting out the stars above. "Then what are you, Tifa?"

The face was in shadow, but Tifa had no doubt of who it was. Under her hand, her heart beat a little faster. "Sephiroth," she said with a little, involuntary smile.

It seemed to startle him; he shifted suddenly, away from her. She caught the sharp outline of his jaw as he turned his face to stare at the sky in wordless introspection. Minutes that felt like an eternity passed before he finally asked, "What are you doing here, Tifa?"

"Stargazing," she said, blinking up at him.

"Stargazing." His head angled back down at her. "I see. And do you think you'll find anything, up there?"

"I already have."

Feathers rustled and leather creaked as Sephiroth lowered himself to his haunches. His hair fell around her as he leaned down to study her. "What did you find?" he asked.

His face was close enough for Tifa to see beyond the pockets of shadow to the terrain underneath. There were indentations and scars in the skin and several places that were too loose or too pinched. He looked almost weary, almost vulnerable. Up close, she could see he was imperfect, and imperfection meant he was human, breakable. _One of us_.

Tifa heard herself swallow. "I should fight you, you know," she said quietly. "I should take my right hand, make it into a fist, and crack your long nose with it."

He stilled, as if waiting for her to make good on her threat, then made a sound like a laugh in his throat. "And how do you know I'd let you? If I saw your fist coming, do you really think I'd let you hit me?"

Tifa smiled, because she knew he wouldn't. "Then what would you do?" she asked.

Sephiroth made a slight shrug. "I'd jump back, most likely, and summon my sword while you're struggling to your feet."

"And how do you know I would struggle?" Tifa asked. "What if I rolled _gracefully_ to the side then charged you while you were still summoning?"

"Then perhaps I'd see you coming and sidestep."

Tifa nodded and closed her eyes to better imagine it. "Then as you were sidestepping, I'd make a grab for one of your wings—"

"You'd be better off going for my coat," his voice advised. "Feathers are more likely to come loose and compromise your handhold."

"Point taken. Then I'd go for your coat instead and I'd use it to slingshot my momentum upward into a kick aimed at your head."

"And I, of course, would block it."

"And I, of course, would spin out of it and land on my feet."

"I doubt you'd land on your feet," Sephiroth said matter-of-factly, "Because I would kick you in the ribs while you were falling, hard enough to break a few. You'd be crumpled on the ground, groaning in pain, but I'd kick you there, in the ribs, again and again, and the last kick would be hard enough to send you onto your back—like you are now—and before you had a chance to move, I'd take my sword—which I would've by now summoned—aim it at your heart, and ki—"

Silence.

Tifa's eyes flew open. Sephiroth was still leaning over her, staring down at her. "You'd what?" Tifa demanded. "Say it!"

"You know what I'd do," he said evenly.

"Then say it," Tifa whispered. "Do it."

His mouth was hard on hers before she could brace herself. It was clumsy and misjudged and upside down—his chin caught her nose, her chin bumped his cheek—but she wanted it. _O__h gods, oh planet, oh stars above!_ she wanted it. Her fingers knotted in his hair, while he cradled her head and thumbed the lines of her neck. Teeth scraped, tongues swept, and then it was over, as quickly as it had begun.

"I told you," Sephiroth panted, snapping his wings open. "I don't indiscriminately kill." His shadow was a chunk of missing sky as he took flight.

Tifa put a hand to her still-wet mouth, stunned, and unbelievably alive.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author replies to comments.


	7. Chapter Six

###  **Chapter Six**

_"Where have you been?" he wanted to know._

_"I was out walking," she answered. "You know how I like the rain."_

_But he was unmollified. "'Out walking?' That's it? Tifa, I've been going out of my mind with worry for the last hour. I didn't know where you were, when you'd be back... What if something had happened to you?"_

"_I'm not helpless, you know," she retorted, bristling. "I can take care of myself."_

_She didn't like the way his eyes refused to believe her...or the way she felt she might need to prove it someday._

* * *

He kissed her…and she did not die. But now she was lost in the dark.

The forest she was in was a curious one. No birds whistled in it, no creatures rustled through its underbrush. The trees themselves were thoroughly and wondrously colored in shades of ripe and unripe berries, and the dirt pathways meandering between them were crisscrossing lines of candy pink. They gave Tifa the odd sensation of walking through a pie. 

She had been standing at a peculiar intersection for at least an hour, lost and lost in thought. In front of her, an oak the color of boysenberries had half a dozen wooden signs nailed into its deep purple trunk, with arrows all pointing in different directions like a pin cushion. _ This way, _ one read. _ That way, _ said another. _ Here. There. Back. Forward. _

_ Run. Stand still. Forget him. Find him. Love him. Hate him. _

"But which him?" she demanded of the tree. "But which direction?"

_Run. This way. Stand still. That way. Forget him. Here. Find him. There. Hate him. Back. Love him. Forward. This is what happens when you're no longer hollow,_ it answered.

But she was tired of the uncertainty that had sat in her limbs for the past year like a cramped muscle. She wanted to move. She wanted to punch. She wanted to kick and stomp. 

She wanted to make a decision. 

She took hold of her frustration in her fists and squeezed it until it became a name. _His_ name. It left her mouth as a surprised gasp, then a raw shout. She shouted it again and listened to it ricochet between berry-colored trees like an echo seeking an ear.

"Perhaps you could try…another name?" a strange voice suggested from somewhere above. "The one you want doesn't seem to be answering."

Tifa spun toward the sound with fists raised. "Who are you? Show yourself!"

A softly rounded ghostly shape appeared on one of the boysenberried limbs. As it became opaque and then solid she could see it had a great many teeth in its grin and was covered from head to tail in the most remarkable purple stripes.

Fists still raised, Tifa asked it warily, "What are you?"

"Isn't it obvious? A cat," it said. "What are you?"

"I'm—" Her fists wavered. _ No longer hollow. _ "Lost."

"Where do you want to go?"

Tifa sighed. She lowered her fists. "You see, that's the hard part. I'm not sure."

"Then stand still," it said. "At least you know where you are now."

"But I don't want to stand still," Tifa corrected. "I'm tired of standing still. I want to go _ somewhere _."

"Oh, _ somewhere _ . That's easy." The cat licked at a paw. "As long as you keep walking you'll always end up _ somewhere _."

"But where do I start? The problem is that I can't see a clear direction."

"Then open your eyes," the cat suggested.

"They are—" _ open _, she was going to say, but the cat was already half gone, fading out—stripe-by-stripe—until the only thing left was the hanging half-moon of its great many-toothed grin. And then that, too, vanished. 

"Then close them," someone said. 

The voice was a match in her ear that lit her already prickly nerves on fire. Tifa reacted swiftly with an elbow backward, followed by a spinning left swing that solidly connected with a black gloved wall. Long fingers closed around her fist, not ungently.

"If this is how you greet old friends, no wonder—"

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" Tifa jerked her hand free and stepped back to collect herself. As the twitchiness left her muscles, her mind dimly registered a smudge of red on his normally flawless cheek. "Aren't you tired of taunting me yet?"

The eyes above the bruise considered her question. "Old habit," he confessed.

His almost-apology caught her off guard as much as his voice had. She sized him up as she would an opponent, looking for openings, weaknesses, cracks in the defenses. He was still a potent presence, but there was less of an edge now: a bruise, rumpled and loosened feathers, a hand cradling his abdomen—where possibly her elbow had landed, where probably he'd already been wounded.

But as a woman who had recently been kissed, his vulnerability drew her in, made her interested and concerned. Impulsively, she cupped his cheek below the bruise. 

The gesture made his breath catch—that she was daring enough to do it or that he had changed enough to allow it, she didn’t know. But it made her feel bold enough to ask, "What happened to you?" 

"He was in the mood to be brutal today." When her thumb grazed a particularly tender spot, Sephiroth winced. Then he laughed softly and said, "Perhaps he smelled you on me."

Tifa snatched her hand back as if burned. "I'm— I didn't think… I didn't know…" 

"Don't." Sephiroth recaptured her hand when she would have hid it behind her back and returned it to the cheek where his skin was still warm with her scent. His hand covered hers, anchoring it, and he told her in a voice that reminded her of a sword unsheathing, "He may get to decide _ when _ he wants to fight, but now I decide _ why_.” 

Tifa did not resist him when he pulled her closer. The warmth of his skin, the possessiveness of his words made her feel…almost in love. _Almost__ like a decision_. She came to one then. Standing at a crossroad under a sign-poked oak the color of boysenberries, Tifa raised herself on her toes and touched her lips to his. 

She had meant to keep the kiss light, experimental, but he was like a caged animal set free in a wide open field. Though her mouth was unfamiliar terrain to him, he was far too delighted by it to stay in one place for long. For minutes, maybe hours, his lips played, his teeth nipped and his tongue swooped until she was dizzy from trying to keep up. 

Finally it became too much. Gasping, she broke off the kiss. She turned her cheek, removing her mouth from temptation, and rested her forehead against his jaw while she struggled for air. His breathing matched hers, she was pleased to note. As Tifa watched his chest rise and fall in rapid cycles, she set her cheek against it, marveling at her affect on this half-tame being. Beneath her ear she could hear thunder, rain, fear.

_I'm scared too!_ Tifa wanted to tell him. _Don’t you think a part of me also wants to run and hide?_ It was like the story of the genie she had heard so many worlds ago: all it took was one touch—or two kisses—to unleash what had been contained for so long. But there'd be no bottling this back up, no way to stuff it back inside when it became too much.

She felt his nose settle at the top of her hair. She heard him inhale deeply.

And she thought, _ But this is what happens when we're no longer hollow. _

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author replies to comments unless on hiatus.


	8. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy October, everyone! 
> 
> If you haven’t read the last chapter, Six, since last week, you should probably do so before reading this one. A scene was begging to be added to it—and who am I to say no?

###  **Chapter Seven**

_“Tifa, if you need anything…”_

_She needed time... She needed air... She needed sleep… She needed a change of scenery… She needed a distraction.... She needed to find comfort in her memories... She needed well wishers to stop telling her what she needed. _

_But mostly, she needed the house to stop smelling like sympathy. _

_“I’m sorry, Cloud. I just want to be alone right now,” she said. _

* * *

No stars shone here. The moon, warm and swollen, hung unchallenged in a velvet backdrop of shadow while below it lay a world out of someone's macabre dream. Tall, cadaverous trees huddled together in secretive clusters, their branches thin like bones. Steep hills, bled of the color pink, bled of the color purple and its friend yellow, bled of all the colors and raked with scars, rose and fell in grassless, chaotic waves.

The wind here was dry and inquisitive. It did not have a love song, it had questions instead. _Why are you here?_ it asked. _Are you one of us?_

_I’m looking for someone, _Tifa told it. _Have you seen a man? He’s this tall, but his hair’s this tall. His eyes are blue. His hair is the color of your leaves. He doesn’t talk much, and he carries a sword as big as himself. Have you seen him?_

_Can you follow? _the wind urged. It swirled around her legs and tugged at her like a child. _Can you come?_

It led her as a breeze, sometimes a flurry, often a gust. _Do you love? Is it lovely? Have you been loved? _it asked.

_I have been, _Tifa told it, pushing her hair back from her face. _And it hurts. _

_Where does it hurt?_ it wanted to know.

_Everywhere, _she answered.

Their journey through the tortured terrain eventually brought them to the iron bars and broken walls of a cemetery. The wind was a gentle nudge at her back, urging her through the gates and into a tilted space of crosses and gravestones that jutted out of the ground like teeth. At the center of it all rose a tall slope, the peak of which no longer pointed up but hung down and curled in on itself like a head bowing. A field of jack o’ lanterns lay warm and glowing below it.

The wind stirred the hair at her cheek. _Is that your lovely?_

Up ahead on a hill, a solitary wing rose from a strong, dark shape cut out of the moon. For the first time since setting foot in this landscape of nightmares, Tifa felt her blood stir, heard her breath quicken.

She thanked the wind. She watched it flicker the lantern lights on its way to wherever it was headed next. And then she took a deep breath and started up the hill to where Sephiroth waited.

But it wasn’t him.

The statue might have been seraphic once and its smile serene, but age had stolen three of its wings and carved on its face a leer. She stood there next to it, embarrassed and feeling like she had been handed a trick—but whether by the statue, the wind, her heart—or all three—she didn’t know.

“Tifa,” she heard Sephiroth say. He sounded tired, amused and close. “I’m here.”

He was a sprawl of leather and wings on one of the cemetery’s low outer walls, looking for all the world like a tree that had been battered by an overnight storm. Though he sat slouched against the crooked iron railing, face in shadow, she knew there’d be fresh signs of a fight on it.

And there were. Someone had left a smudge of purple on his chin; someone had drawn a bloody line from the top of his hairline to his eyebrow. A handkerchief was already fished from her pocket and in her hand, though she knew it would help neither. He winced slightly as she blotted at the cut, but didn’t protest.

_Where does it hurt? _the wind had asked her. _Everywhere_.

“I hate this,” she told him. “I hate worrying about you and wondering what state I’ll find you in. Turn your head.”

He did as she asked, but his eyes, lit with something like surprise, stayed on her face. “You…worry about me?”

Tifa didn’t answer, only swatted at him with her handkerchief.

He might’ve chuckled. His hand, gloveless and warm, caught her wrist. “I’m fine, Tifa. If you had waited a little longer, I would’ve come to you,” he chastised.

“But you didn’t,” Tifa retorted. “So here I am, searching for a man and finding him in—” She gestured at the morbid scene around them. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“This _man_,” Sephiroth said slowly, as if the word was a new coat, “was trying to sleep.” 

“But here? In a graveyard?”

A corner of his mouth twitched. “I assumed I’d be able to rest in peace.”

Perhaps it was meant in jest, but Tifa felt her face redden at what she heard as subtle rebuke. She looked away as she pocketed the cloth still sticky with his blood and mumbled, "You’re right. I should’ve waited. You were sleeping and… I’m so sorry.” 

She turned to weave her way back through the gravestones, but before she could take so much as a half step forward, she was pulled backward. She caught herself stumbling ungracefully down onto a lap. 

“Stop squirming,” Sephiroth commanded. A small smile ghosted about his mouth as he guided the wrist he still held to loop around his neck. “I’ve never been apologized to before. Let me savor it for a moment.”

“Never?” she asked, shocked. Then Tifa recalled who he was and who he had been.

He shook his head. “It was…satisfying, I suppose…but not nearly as much as this.” His arms bracketed her ribs and his teeth flashed just once before he kissed her, under the moonlight, in a silent, sleeping cemetery.

It was a meandering and aimless kiss, without any agenda or pace. It was a kiss, not to guide passion to a bed, but for the magical sensation of feeling his mouth opening over hers.

After a year of being invisible, it was extraordinary to be wanted for anything at all, Tifa thought. But especially for this, and especially by him. She splayed her fingers lightly over his cheek, over the bruise on his chin, and reveled in the way his jaw was strong. And when it ended, Tifa tasted on her lips a little desire, a little pleasure, but mostly the way he was tired.

She sighed. “I really should leave.”

“Sleep would be futile now,” Sephiroth dryly informed her. “You will stay.”

For all his high-handedness, Tifa noted that his arms were still around her, that his breathing still hadn’t returned to normal. Would it ever fail to pleased her, she wondered, to know she could have an effect on things like his pulse, his breathing, the placement of his limbs? She allowed herself a grin, which she quickly hid by making a show of taking in their surroundings.

"Do you come here a lot?" she asked him, genuinely curious.

“Often enough. I envy them,” his head nodded in the direction of the cemetery, “the dead.”

Tifa frowned. “Why the dead?”

"Because in order to experience death, one must have experienced life.”

“But not all life is worth experiencing,” Tifa said quietly. She slid her arm from his neck and sat with her hands, palms up, in her lap. “Sometimes, especially towards the end, it’s full of suffering. Like when my dad died.”

Sephiroth’s hand covered one of hers. “Tell me.”

“It was an illness that ate up his insides and dragged on for too long. After he died, people liked to tell me that he was in a better place, where pain couldn’t reach him.”

“Did you believe them?”

“Yes. No. I was angry a lot.” She traced a whorl of his knuckle before continuing. “_I_ was hurting too—where was _my_ ‘better place?’ I didn’t think it was fair that only the dead got one. I was… selfish.”

“Tifa, it isn’t selfish to want that. It’s natural,” he told her. “They even want that here.”

She blinked at him. “People actually live here?”

“Of course,” he answered, as if it were unthinkable for this dead world not to have life. “They are monstrous—as you can imagine—but content. They exist for one purpose only and have thoroughly embraced that role. But there was one, long ago, who wanted to be something less monstrous, something…better.”

“What happened?"

"Failure, of course. Disaster. Near ruination of worlds.” Sephiroth marked the crease between her brows with a finger. “But in spite of that—or maybe because of that—he took up his monstrosity with renewed vigor and lived happily ever after."

Tifa sat back in the shelter of his arms, digesting the story as he settled his wings around them. It was the second time she’d heard him talk of anyone other than her, Cloud or himself. It made her wonder what he did outside of their destructive triangle, and how he had come by such tales of dragons and failed self-improvement.

“So I guess he got his ‘better place’ after all,” she mused. “Do you like that story?”

“Not particularly,” he answered. “I feel he lacked conviction. If I wanted something that badly, _nothing_ would stop me from getting it.”

It was the way he said it, like a hammer striking steel, like a sword being forged, that made Tifa sit up and stare at him curiously. “_Is_ there something you want that badly?”

Sephiroth stared back. “I have only ever wanted one thing, Tifa. To be free.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author replies to comments unless on hiatus.


	9. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been debating with myself for the last ten years (not exaggerating) on whether or not to have *that* kind of scene. But recently, an idea hit me that felt right…so now there is a rating change.
> 
> Thank you to [**Icarus_Isambard**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icarus_Isambard) and [**NineShadows**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NineShadows) for listening to me ramble about this chapter, and a HUGE thank you to **Varee** for going the extra mile for this grateful author.

### Chapter Eight

_The highest point in the area was a mountain that towered over the town._

_Tifa stood at the top of it, as the wind tossed her hair, as the map of the world lay at her feet, and wondered if there was more._

"_Tifa." Cloud's voice sounded nervous, impatient. "You still haven't answered me. Will you?"_

* * *

  
The moon wasn't a moon tonight. It was a four-sided clock trapped in a tower. And on its glowing, warm moon-like faces, Tifa could see that he was late. But if he had found her in a jungle, in a stampede, on a mountain, he could surely find her here.

The city she was in was bigger and taller than any she'd seen before. It jutted into a fog covered bay as a densely packed metropolis of old worlds meeting new. Bright, rainbow-lit buildings rose in edges of metal and glass over the pink blossomed cherry trees. Hard streets and alleyways ran in tightly angled lines, while above them balloons shaped like fish floated, lazy, in an ocean of warm, salt-scented stars.

The clock tower Tifa stared up at was at the center of a building that stood between the bay and the city. Glowing red letters lined its roof on the bayside, announcing to ships wandering near its docks that it was a port, while its cityside hugged the length of a wide plaza with long, open arms. It was in the middle of the plaza that Tifa waited, a moment of stillness surrounded by moving bodies and accents that were as varied as they were busy. _A rock parting a swift-moving river. _

"What is that?" she heard behind her.

He was so close the hairs on her neck hummed, and almost immediately Tifa felt Sephiroth's nose touch the top of her head in greeting. She turned and caught sight of new bruises, new things to worry over.

But her fussing only served to frustrate, so with forced cheerfulness, Tifa held up two wooden skewers of grilled meat and a paper cup with a plastic spoon stuck in a heap of pink ice cream. "These? I was hungry. I thought you might be too. Have you ever—?"

"No," he said. He regarded the food with a curious air. "But I will. Hold on."

Before she could respond, her legs were swept out from under her and her body was gathered tightly to his chest. A rush of wind filled her ears as Sephiroth pushed into the air.

"Oh," Tifa said on a sudden inhale, awestruck. For a glorious few seconds they hovered over the map of the city and its scintillating noise.

The ends of her hair floated upward as he descended. He alit on the flattened roof of the clock tower's building, near the red-glowing sign. It took him three steps to come to a complete halt, and when he set her on her feet, amusement danced in his eyes.

"I've never done that before," Tifa explained shyly, ducking her head.

Sephiroth smiled, but his attention was on her hands. "What have you gotten us?"

"Oh, yeah. Let's sit down first. Come on," she said, beckoning him. She found a break in the sign's letters and sat down, cross-legged, to look out over the bay. Sephiroth folded his long legs under him and settled next to her at an angle that would accommodate the cumbersome wings at his hips.

Tifa set the ice cream cup down. She divided the meat skewers between hands and held one out to him. "Here. Try it."

Sephiroth took it from her and sniffed at it. "What is it?"

"It's chicken," Tifa told him. She pulled a chunk of it from the stick with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. "Mmm."

Sephiroth watched her for several seconds before biting a small piece off. He chewed through it slowly, rolling it on his tongue as if taste and texture were things he had never encountered before. When he swallowed, a distant, absorbed look had grown on his face.

Tifa had finished her chicken and was licking her fingers. "You like?" she asked.

Her question snapped him from his thoughts. His teeth flashed briefly before he tore the rest of the meat from the skewer. He chewed faster this time, though still clearly savoring it, and when he was done, he eyed the ice cream Tifa had begun eating with great interest.

She grinned. "That looks like a yes."

She scooped out a spoonful and held it in front of his lips. He reared back and studied the pink heap for a moment, then tentatively closed his mouth around it. His eyes widened as Tifa reclaimed the spoon.

"It's cold," he informed her.

"I know," Tifa said, laughing.

"What is this?"

"Ice cream. Strawberry."

She ate two bites then surrendered the cup to Sephiroth. He accepted it with a hesitation that lasted until his second spoonful. With each taste, he held the ice cream in his mouth until it melted. Tifa watched the process half-amused, half-fascinated, recognizing in it the same delight of discovery he applied to all of his kisses.

Since she didn't need to ask what Sephiroth thought of strawberry ice cream, Tifa asked instead, "What did you mean when you said you wanted to be free?"

The hand preoccupied with scraping the bottom of the cup slowed. "Exactly what I said."

"But free of what?"

"Free of this cage. Free of him." He dropped the spoon into the empty cup and set it aside. "The same things you wanted."

Tifa shook her head. "Not the same. Not exactly."

A clipped laugh sounded from him. "That's right. You had a choice."

She touched his chest. "Don't be like this," she pleaded. "Don't pull away. Tell me how to help you. Tell me what I can do for you."

He lifted the hand on his chest to his mouth and pressed a kiss to it. "There's nothing you can do for me that you haven't already done."

"But what have I done?"

He slid her hand along his cheek and jaw. "You make me…different. You make me feel."

"Is it enough though?" Tifa wondered. She could feel him slipping away from her, slowly. Holding onto him was like trying to catch rain with her hands. Bruise by bruise, feather by feather, he was slipping through her fingers.

_But was he ever truly yours to begin with?_

"It has to be," he answered. "You know I'm not capable of more."

"Then maybe I'm not making you feel enough," she said, and pushed away from him to raise herself up on her knees. Her hand paused at the zipper of her vest. "Sephiroth, I—" She stopped, sure of what she wanted to do, but unsure of what she wanted to say. _What? She what?_

A night breeze stirred the thoughts around her ears. _Love, lovely, loved, _it answered. Below them, on the port side of the building, the bay's dark water lapped rhythmically at the dock posts, adding its sentiments to the warm currents in the air.

_I have_, Tifa thought. _And I could._

"I want to give you something," she said. "Have you—?"

His gaze lifted from where it had been caught on her zipper. "No," he answered. He swallowed. "But I will."

His eyes were like blue flares in the darkness as he watched her unzip her vest. Tifa marveled privately at what wondrous alchemy of attraction had led them to this point, what emotions had crept in to resignify them from enemies to lovers. After she had lifted her undershirt over her head and cast off her bra he reached for her. His hair was like silk against her sensitized skin as she cradled his head in her arms while his mouth and hands explored.

When he turned up his face to hers she found his lips warm and swollen and determined. He kissed her with a sense of purpose that hadn't been there before, but it was directionless; his lack of experience made him unsure. It would be up to Tifa to show him.

She pushed his coat from his shoulders, his arms, and spread it out on the roof beneath him. Slowly, she peeled off their layers—her half-skirt, his breeches, her shorts, his tall, stubborn boots—until the area around them was littered with clothes and armor, and all their skin and vulnerabilities were laid bare to the night.

They were an undiscovered country to each other that both were eager to explore. As Tifa urged him to lie back, his hair became silver rivers spilling over their banks and onto the rooftop. She climbed all over him, kissing the rises of moonlight at his throat, the plains at his waist. He mapped her hills and valleys with palms and fingertips. And when desire had made waiting impossible, she took him into her on a sharp inhale.

"_Tifa."_ An ocean of stars lay in his eyes.

She set a rhythm to stoke her own fires, knowing that his were readily burning. In a distant part of her mind, she remembered that she had thought this man cold once, this man that rippled beneath her. The hands that held her hips had frightened her once. He frightened her now, but with how much she felt for him, how ready she was to burst for him.

He had found her breasts again, and when her pace had finally become too much, Tifa leaned further into his hands and arched her back with a thin cry. _Oh gods, oh planet, oh stars above! _Her mind trumpeted his name—_Sephiroth! Sephiroth!_—as her insides clenched around him, while under her thighs he trembled and clutched and broke.

She wilted into a satisfied heap, and listened to his thundering heartbeat as she lay on his chest. After what seemed like hours, she finally, gingerly, unbent her legs and tucked herself under the arm and wing at his side.

He stroked her back once, twice, then let his hand rest there. "What have you given me, Tifa?" he murmured. He kissed the top of her head.

She didn't know, but as she clutched Sephiroth and all his pieces a little tighter, Tifa hoped it would be enough.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author replies to comments unless on hiatus.


End file.
